Category Archives: Wine & Food

This is simply the ultimate and easiest No-Need-to-Knead pizza dough recipe on the planet. You simply will not believe how easy this is to make.  The idea came to me as a logical offshoot from Alton Brown’s Knead Not Sourdough recipe (Good Eats, The Food Network).  Once you try this thin-crust pizza you’ll never again order out.  It’s just that easy and simple to make.

You’ll need:

17 ½ dry ozs. of unbleached flour, either general purpose or bread (that’s one pound plus 1 ½ ounces in weight, not to be confused with fluid ounces)

Note: If you don’t have a good kitchen scale, do yourself a favor and get one.  If you’re serious about baking good yeast-based breads an accurate scale in vital, as it’s much more precise than attempting to measure flour by volume.  Breads using other leavening agents such as baking powder are not nearly as critical, so you can usually get by with volume measurements in those cases.

⅓ cup cornmeal

1 tbs. Kosher salt (if using table salt instead, halve the amount of salt; Kosher salt is has a much coarser grain, and thus takes up twice the volume as an equivalent amout of table salt)

¼ tsp. active-dry yeast (an unbelievably small amount but trust me, it works)

12 fluid ozs. cool water (tap, filtered, bottled . . . it all works)

More flour for rolling the crust

Step 1. The night before you want to make your pizza, mix well the weighed flour, cornmeal, salt, and yeast.  It’s imperative to mix this very well, as the yeast will die if it comes into contact with straight salt after the water is added.  Stir in the water and work it in until the dry ingredients are fully incorporated.  There’s no need to go wild here; you’re only looking to get the dry mixture wet enough to stick together.

Step 2. Place the dough into a large covered pan (I use a Dutch oven with a heavy lid), or into a large bowl covered with plastic wrap.  Let the yeast do its thing.  The natural fermentation process will do all the “kneading” for you.  The only time you’ll need to touch the dough is to give it a quick couple of punch-downs and turns just before you go to bed and once again when you get up in the morning.  After each punch-down/turn session, make sure you once again cover the dough or it will dry out.

Step 3. Approximately 19 hours into the fermentation process, divide the dough into four equal portions and form each portion into a tight ball.  Cover the balls you are not yet ready to roll out to prevent drying.  Take one ball of dough at a time and, using copious amounts of flour, roll it out into a 12- to 14-inch circle.  You must use a lot of flour to prevent stickiness and to get a truly thin, thin crust.  At this point you can go one of two ways:

Step 4a (method 1). Place your rolled-out pizza dough into a rimmed pizza pan with holes in the bottom and prebake the crust at 450° for two to three minute, until it just starts to puff.  Remove the crust and let it cool while you roll out and bake the subsequent crusts.  When you’re done, you will have four crusts either ready for the freezer or onto which you can place your toppings and bake for dinner later that evening.  To freeze, wrap each crust separately in heavy-duty aluminum foil.  To bake, load the crust with your favorite toppings and place the pizza straight onto a rack in the lower third of a preheated 450° oven for 13 to 15 minutes.  The crust edges should get a rustic, dark brown, the bottom evenly browned, and the cheese nice and bubbly.  Pull the pizza out of the oven and let set for a few minutes before cutting into slices.

Step 4b (method 2). The other way you can go with this, for that truly authentic feel, is to preheat a pizza stone at 450° for at least forty-five minutes.  Roll out the crust as above (one at a time of course, and don’t forget to cover the ones you’re not working), place the unbaked, well-floured crust on a peel sprinkled with either cornmeal or course semolina flour (the cornmeal or semolina will act as mini ball bearings to help ease sliding the crust off the peel), top the pizza with your chosen ingredients and slide it from the peel onto the pizza stone using a series of quick, short jerking motions so the toppings don’t fall off the crust as it slides onto the stone.  Bake at 450° for at least 15 minutes or until the edges are a dark, rustic brown and, when carefully lifted with a spatula, when the underside appears evenly browned beneath.

If you did everything correctly and didn’t put the more soggy ingredients directly onto the crust, it will have a crispy, almost cracker-like crunch and rustic French bread-like flavor that is indescribable.

Additional Tips: If you use a pizza sauce, go sparingly to preclude getting a soggy crust.  If it’s a homemade sauce, make sure it’s thick enough not to get watery.  Another interesting sauce to try is my jalapeño pesto recipe, but go lightly because it can be spicy.  If you use tomato slices rather than sauce (Margherita-style pizza), place the slices above a protective layer of cheese.  You might want to consider seeding the tomatoes first for some added assurance against sogginess.  Pepperoni slices should first be defatted by sandwiching them between paper towels and briefly microwaving beforehand (but don’t overdo this or the pepperoni will be overdone by the time the pizza comes out of the oven).  This also gives the pepperoni a nice crunchiness when the pizza is finished and keeps excessive fat from depositing onto the pizza.  Place fresh, sliced mushrooms above the cheese and below the pepperoni or other meats.  The fat from the meat will help cook the mushrooms, and the cheese will keep the moisture from the mushrooms from reaching the crust.

Wine Pairings: Wine pairings for pizza are pretty much dependent upon the toppings and even the choice of cheeses.  Heavy, tomato sauce-based pizzas loaded with meat go well with Chiantis, California Sangioveses, and even Super Tuscans.  Lighter Margherita-style, vegetarian, and other white-type pizzas (meaning they lack a tomato sauce base) need a lighter red such as a Pinot Noir or a heavier white such as Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, or Pinot Grigio.  A spicy pizza using my jalapeño sauce or perhaps a barbecue chicken topping will pair well with anything from a peppery Shiraz to a slightly sweet white Riesling or perhaps even a Gewurztraminer in the case of something particularly hot.

Please feel free to drop by and list some of your own favorite toppings. I’m sure other readers of this recipe would love to get some new and creative ideas.

And just in time for the Super Bowl . . . Super Bowl XLVI, that is.

The great things about this recipe are:

• It’s healthy as all get out.
• It’s so tasty you’ll completely forget how healthy it is.
• It’s not as spicy hot as it sounds (although it’s definitely not for the timid of tongue, either).
• It goes great with anything from tortilla chips to corn chips to potato chips to even pretzels.
• It’s so simple to make even a husband can do it.
• The leftover jalapeño pesto is great on a whole variety of dishes ranging from omelets to burgers (use as a topping)  and even mixed with ground beef for tacos or chili.  By all means use your imagination with the leftover pesto, because you’ll probably think up dozens of uses for it.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds fresh whole  jalapeño peppers
• 2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 tsp. granulated or 2 tsp. fresh crushed garlic
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• ⅓ cup good extra virgin olive oil or other healthy monounsaturated oil

Step 1. Bring to boil just enough water to immerse the jalapeños.  Once the water is boiling, add the jalapeños and bring the water back to boiling.  Gently boil the jalapeños, stirring occasionally, for fifteen minutes.  Drain the jalapeños and set aside until they are cool enough to handle.

Step 2. Slice the jalapeños in half lengthwise and remove the stems.  Now, this next procedure is where you control the heat to some extent.  On most of the jalapeños, remove the seeds and the ribs to which those seeds are attached.  Keep the seeds and ribs on approximately one-third of the jalapeños, choosing in particular those jalapeños with very white, healthy-looking seeds and discarding those seeds that are dingy or brown in color.  Increasing the number of seeds and ribs retained will increase the heat; decreasing that number will help to tame it.

Step 3. Place the jalapeños, cumin, garlic, and salt into a food processor.  While pulsing, slowly drizzle in the olive oil.  Do no overdo the processing or you’ll destroy those beautiful white seeds and lose texture, but you do want a fairly smooth consistency.

Serve with either warm or cold with your favorite chips. Warm is particularly interesting, especially if you contrast that with a well-refrigerated California onion dip (one envelope of Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix combined with one pint of reduced-fat sour cream).  Serve these two dips side-by-side and watch eager fans alternate between the two of them.

And since this is listed under Wine & Food the next question would have to be, what kind of wine would you serve with this?  Well, first of all, this is definitely an accompaniment to beer, especially a good, fairly strong ale.  But if you would like wine with this, it’ll have to be one that helps tame the fire.  That suggests a semisweet white.  Think:  Johannisberg or German Rieslings, Chenin Blanc, or Gewürztraminer.  The cooler white wine serving temperatures supply immediate relief and the sweetness helps neutralize the capsaicin (the compound that gives peppers their “heat”) in the long term.

I mentioned in my blog on Bordeaux-Style Wines that red Bordeaux is, “Probably THE Classic French Wine.”  There is in my opinion, however, another French red wine that is at least as good, if not better.  That would be the incomparable but  not widely known Châteauneuf-du-Pape, named after a small village in the southern portion of France’s Rhone river valley region.  But whereas the Bordeaux uses as it base grape Cabernet Sauvignon, the Châteauneuf-du-Pape derives its character from the Grenache, blended with Syrah and Mourvèdre.  Remember the first letters of those three grapes, as that’ll come in handy in just a moment.  Other grapes blended with the base Grenache may include Cinsault, Cournoise, Muscardin and, to lesser degrees, Picardan, Picpoul, Roussanne, Terret Noir, and Vaccarese.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape is very full-bodied and considerably tannic in nature. Thus it benefits greatly from aging.  And because if this full-bodied, tannic nature, Châteauneuf-du-Pape pairs very well with many of the same meats as does Bordeaux, in particular beef, lamb, and game.  But unlike Bordeaux, Châteauneuf-du-Pape also takes on the spicier dishes with ease because of the greater Syrah component.  Think chili, stew, beef bourguignonne, and even many tomato-based Italian dishes including pastas.   At the other end of the spectrum, and something you definitely wouldn’t want to try routinely with Bordeaux, are pairings with tomato-based shellfish dishes and, really surprisingly, pork and chicken dishes that would normally benefit from a much lighter red such as Burgundy (Pinot Noir) or one of the fuller-bodied whites such as Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc.  This makes Châteauneuf-du-Pape a much more versatile wine than its more famous but comparatively restrictive Bordeaux neighbor.  This is one red that allows the home chef to do some really creative pairings without too much worry of clashing.

Although Châteauneuf-du-Pape prices have been following the downward trend of other French wines in recent years, they are still not what I consider a great buy despite their versatility.  Fortunately, as with Bordeaux, you do have alternatives.  The Grenache grape thrives in warm, dry climates and as a result has been planted extensively around the world.  Notable examples include California’s San Joaquin Valley, Eastern Spain (where it’s called Garnacha), Southern Italy, and very importantly Southern Australia, particularly in the McLaren Vale, and Barossa Valley appellations.  And it is from Southern Australia where you make your best deals on a very good, reasonably priced Châteauneuf-style red.

As with Bordeaux, Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a registered name and thus it cannot be used in the marketing of similar Grenache-based red blends originating from beyond the Châteauneuf-du-Pape region of France.  So, Australian vineyards routinely market their version of this wine as a GSM.  Do those letters sound familiar?  They should.  I asked at the beginning of this article that you remember the first letters of the three most important grapes for this style of wine—Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre.  Armed with this knowledge and a good wine rating (I personally use Wine Spectator as I’ve found their tastes come closest to matching my own) you now have all the information you require to find a comparable wine at a fraction of the cost of the original, and Costco is a great place to find a wide selection of Australian GSMs from which to choose.

If you love red wines but haven’t tried a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, you owe it to yourself to give this style of wine a try.  You’ll be very glad you did.